May 19th 2020 | Berkley
Source: Library
When their foster-turned-adoptive mother suddenly dies, four brothers struggle to keep open the doors of her beloved Harlem knitting shop, while dealing with life and love in Harlem. Jesse Strong is known for two things: his devotion to his adoptive mom, Mama Joy, and his reputation for breaking hearts in Harlem.I wanted to love this story so much. I wanted the cute romance I was promised by the premise and instead, I found myself annoyed at the characters. I’ve recently fallen in love with knitting so I was excited to read a story where men knit. It just sounded right up my ally in terms of romance.
When Mama Joy unexpectedly passes away, he and his brothers have different plans on what to do with Strong Knits, their neighborhood knitting store: Jesse wants to keep the store open; his brothers want to shut it down.
Jesse makes an impassioned plea to Kerry Fuller, his childhood friend who has had a crush on him her entire life, to help him figure out how to run the business. Kerry agrees to help him reinvent the store and show him the knitty-gritty of the business, but the more time they spend together, the more the chemistry builds. Kerry, knowing Jesse’s history, doesn’t believe this relationship will exist longer than one can knit one, purl one. But Jesse is determined to prove to her that he can be the man for her—after all, real men knit.
There was so much telling and not enough showing. There were paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition for no reason. I don’t always mind exposition, and I think there is a place for it, but it just felt like there was too much of it in this book. After a while I fully understood that Mama Joy had died and this left a huge strain on the lives of those closest to her and I wanted more. How are they managing their grief? Mama Joy had clearly helped them in so many ways so how did she equip them with dealing with grief to the best of our ability.
And I really wanted to love Kerry, but I had so many moments where she frustrated me. I don’t think her characterization was all that consistent. She went from being a shy, quiet girl to someone who could handle any and all confrontations to being very unsure around Jesse. It’s not to say that we don’t have different aspects to our personalities but Kerry didn’t feel like she was fully formed. At the same time, I was so frustrated at how she reacted to any woman Jesse was with. You have feelings for this guy, yes, but he’s constantly talking about how he sees you as a sister. That doesn’t mean you get to shame women who have casual sex with him. Maybe I’m reading this aspect of the story wrong, so correct me if I am, but I was over it pretty quickly.
At the same time, I felt zero chemistry between Kerry and Jesse. The ending to the story was extremely rushed and I hated how they had their big moment. It came out of nowhere especially because I didn’t think either of them had any chemistry with each other. If I’m honest I felt like Kerry had more chemistry with the other brothers. If she’d ended up with any of the other brothers, I would’ve loved it.
I will absolutely give Kwana Jackson’s next book a shot because I truly do think her future stories will work for me. Real Men Knit, however, just wasn’t that story.
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